


Dividing Zeroes

by GibbousLunation



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath, Bipolar Disorder, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Panic Attacks, spoilers for seven's route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibbousLunation/pseuds/GibbousLunation
Summary: 707 doesn’t exist, Luciel doesn’t know what he wants, and he keeps stumbling over his own breaths and freezing up between smiles. Happy endings have come and gone,  he wonders when he’ll wake up.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kright/gifts).



> I can't believe this is my first Mystic Messenger fic but I guess I just had too many half finished ideas I couldn't get onto paper, so instead I wrote this. I have a lot of thoughts about Luciel's character and a lot of them center around wondering how he'd deal with trying to be happy considering his life so far. I posted this on tumblr and someone had a really interesting tag about Seven and bpd? I don't know much about bpd but if people find comfort in my version of his personality then I think that's great- on the other hand if I'm portraying anything incorrectly by tagging this please let me know.   
> Also, I wrote this for my best friend Taryn because I convinced her to play this game and have been waiting impatiently for her to finish Seven's route purely so I could inflict her with emotions. Whoops ;)   
> I worry a lot about this poor little hacker boy.

He realizes in the sort of way one wakes up in the morning; lazy and slow and wrapped up in warmth. Calmly at first, like the emotions are bubbling at the surface, between layers of dissonance and fuzziness. Like he's intangible, just for a moment.

He catches himself smiling at nothing, humming tunes under his breath without thinking. He catches himself, however hesitantly, genuinely looking forward to tomorrow. He catches himself dreaming about seeing himself in the mirror years from now with laugh lines etching canyons into his cheeks, and there's a heavy pit swallowing the rest of his sentence up before he can blink. 

The realization is very nearly terrifying, very nearly enough to sink him completely because he’s not allowed to have these things, they’d drilled that into his head and written it on his bones and he _can’t exis_ t. Can’t be a person who owns things, who has a place or dreams or goals because he’s a shadow, he’s nothing Luciel _you don’t get to be happy._

He catches himself grinning and sliding across floor tiles in nothing but an old t-shirt, boxers, and fluffy socks and suddenly its like the air is punched from his lungs. Suddenly, it feels so awfully temporary, so translucent and he’s desperate. He wants, so badly, he wants to keep all of it and everything else that’s been his had to disappear so what’s to say anything will stay. His throat clogs with frustrated tears, his hands clench and his knees shake and it’s so much. Too much, to have all of it and know it has to vanish like everything else.

 _This is temporary, this is a dream._ He wants to fight it, he wants to hold onto everything close to himself and just stay. It won’t ever be enough, but if he could just have one more night, one more day with her and Saeran then maybe…

A pair of warm fingers are slipping between his tense ones. Slowly, gentle lips press against his back and arms wrap feather light around his stomach. He comes back to himself thread by thread, she murmurs kind nothings against his neck and waits.

“Saeyoung,” the lips whisper, peppering kisses across his skin. “Saeyoung, come back to bed.” He feels her thumbs drag carefully across his knuckles, feels her heartbeat fluttering in her fingertips and he breaks apart and rebuilds in her hands.  He lets himself be moulded and manhandled, follows her into his-their- room and lets himself be nothing for a moment. Thoughts pile and careen in his brain and some instinctive part knows he’ll have to wake up soon, but he’d like to enjoy this dream, while he can. He’d like to believe he could have her, just for a moment.

“Saeyoung,” warm hands card through his hair, lift his glasses from his nose, and caress his cheeks. “Look at me, sweetheart.” But he knows, he knows if he does then he’ll _want_. If he looks at her and counts her freckles and the spots of old mascara flaking onto her cheeks, it’ll be too hard to let it go.

He does, anyways. Eventually, and his eyes meet warm brown, the softest smile he’s ever seen, relaxed with sleep and warmth. He feels like crying.

“You’re here, sweetheart. You’re here, I’ve got you. This is real,” she says and he knows with glaring certainty that she must be an angel, must be otherworldly because he buries his head into her shoulder and she doesn’t leave. He feels her hands brush through his hair, hears the soft shushing sounds and feels the gentle kisses she presses to his head and he _wants_.

Sometimes, the littlest things remind him of what he is, of what he can’t be. The worst is knowing he’s not allowed to want things, not really. All Luciel is, everything he has, is laid out between two computer screens in a string of numbers and letters that blink and disappear faster than anyone would ever remember. Programs aren’t meant to last, he knows, they exist and then they’re modified and upgraded and before too long there’s nothing left from the original. He’s meant to be replaced, one day. If he dares forget that, people could get hurt. If he dares to want things, people could be in danger.

But Luciel is selfish, Luciel wants and wishes and his heart breaks a thousand times in little ways but he opens another bag of chips and he’s fine, anyways.

Usually, he’d drown himself in codes, in work and in the RFA and force himself into place. He’d bundle up the fraying edges of his heart and tuck all of it behind the 707 façade and he’d be _fine_. Usually he’d bounce back after the sunlight peeked over the hilltops- not that he could see it anyways- and drained the moon and the stars from his veins, the despair trailing and pooling beneath him with it. Usually, he’d crumble apart in the quiet shadows and nobody would know because nobody cared and that was fine too.

But, he’s speaking out loud in distant mumbles and she’s there, carding her fingertips across his skin and looking at him with wide, caring eyes. Like she wants to rewrite every self depreciating thought criss crossing his mind, like she wants to pull him apart and find the malware in his coding and fix that too. Like her heart is breaking apart along with his.

“Saeyoung,” she shutters inwards, a skip in her record that nearly frees the sob in his throat. “You are more than what they made you.” She’s whispering but the words hit him like thunder and he’s realizing all over again. That he’s happy, that he can’t be happy. That if he’s happy, they’ll take it from him.

He wants to claw his fingers into his-their-bed and scream until they take him away from her. He wants to meld his arms around her so that he won’t have to wake up for one second without her kindness. He wants, and he wants and he wants.

She looks at him, presses a kiss to the frown of his lips so sweetly, like she loves him and, god. He doesn’t deserve it, but Saeyoung is scared and Luciel is selfish and 707 is so damn grateful he’s lost himself between the masks. Not that it matters. She can see right to his splintering center, and she loves him anyways.

He just doesn’t know if that will be enough.

 

____

 

Saeyoung isn’t used to things being alright. Sometimes he can live in the moment, focus on the skip-jump-leap of his heart every time she smiles that smile just for him. Focus on the fact he’s free to do anything, to be anyone because the agency doesn’t own him anymore. Sometimes the world is too big, too open and he feels so impossibly insignificant. Sometimes he blinks and expects to wake up alone, and hysteria rattles at his ribcage. But he’s fine, probably. He can handle it, maybe.

Except for the nightmares. Except for the fear that eats him up inside every time Saeran leaves the house (what if he doesn’t come back, what if they take him again, _whatifwhatifwhatif_ )

He can do normal, except for the way he’s never been normal before. Except for the fact he’s not sure what normal is, not really.

Sure, he’s seen movies. He’s read- a lot, everything- and he knows that relationships are full of silly nothing moments between heartfelt real moments. He knows that families usually aren’t jagged shards that dig beneath your nails or encircle your heart and poison everything they touch. He knows normal means things like worrying about money, about vacations and laundry and little tiny things that people do every day.

He knows normal doesn’t mean screaming himself awake every night, clawing at his arms until he can erase the image of his own blood trailing through his fingers and the gun waving in his brother’s hands. He just can’t seem to fix it, to make his not normal broken pieces fit behind a mask anymore. To get rid of the dreams ( _V’s speaking to him, blood pools around them and he can’t move, can’t breathe and she’s so scared, Saeran’s thumb poised over a button that will destroy everything. ‘You shouldn’t have trusted me, Luciel. You shouldn’t have left him behind. You left him behind and he hates you for it. You don’t deserve to be alive.’_ )

He can’t breathe, sometimes. For a moment. Panic attacks, he reads. ( _He thinks they should be called something worse, because he’s trained to fight and nothing, no attack has ever swallowed him up whole from the inside out_.) They take something from him, each time. He blinks himself back to awareness and sometimes she’s there, eyes wet and round, and sometimes he’s alone but he’s too tired to move.

But he’s okay, because there’s no reason not to be. But he’s fine because that’s what 707 would be and he can’t remember what Saeyoung was like, but Saeran looks at him sometimes and he remembers the instinctive need to make everything alright, and that’s enough to force him to get up and force a smile and keep going.

 

___

 

 

Saeran keeps leaving.

There’s something on the mend between them, too tenuous to think on but it’s still new. To Saeran, Luciel is a stranger, an enemy turned accomplice. Luciel isn’t the positive figure of strength he remembered, he’s a sniveling, shaking disaster only barely keeping himself from imploding entirely. Saeran probably thinks of him as weak- he lived life all these years after all. He went to school, had friends he was never meant to have and laughed and joked and (unlearned flinching at every sudden move, forgot to track the steps outside his door and sleep with his eyes open, learned how to smile and forced himself to relax, just a little bit).

Saeran didn’t, he’d lived in hell for longer. He’d gone through worse. Yet he never woke up sobbing, he never shook apart over nothing at all. He was healing in his own way but he was stronger, the way Saeyoung had always been.

( _Saeran couldn’t kill him, but he probably hated him anyways. Luciel wouldn’t blame him, he hated himself most days.)_

 

____

 

“Saeyoung,” she breathes across his clammy forehead, he releases the scream building in his lungs as a puff of air in response, and realizes he’d been dreaming again. Her hands are intertwined with his, gentle but with a tension underneath that tells him he’d been clawing at himself again.

“Sorry,” he whispers back, after a moment. It’s dark, but he can still see her frown. She leans back, sitting upright with their hands still clasped together.

“You were dreaming,” she starts, and bites her lip. He knows the rest of her sentence anyways, something involving ‘getting worse’ and probably ‘needing help’. He blinks in the half light, letting the thought spin across his skin. She was worrying about him, waking up in the middle of the night just as often as he was. There were little crescent moons of lavender under her eyes the other day, she’d yawned all through breakfast and groggily stumbled off afterwards and it was because of him.

“Sorry,” he says again, not knowing what he can do. How he can help. Her eyebrows crinkle together again, in the dark he can still read her frustration clear as day. He swallows, tries again. “It was the same dream, about the. Uh. The night.”

His lips are so dry and cracked, his tongue shoots out nervously and her eyes trail his face, looking for something. Her face is still drawn, concerned.

“I… I’m worried.” He winces at the break in his voice, her eyebrows immediately shoot up into a whole new range of concern and he hurries to cut off her words. “I’m. I don’t know how to do…this. The day to day things, the normal things. I keep thinking and I can’t stop thinking and I…”

“Worry,” she finishes her hands finding his under the blankets, comforting.

He knows she’s thinking of the past months, of his manic bouts of laughter and cheer that immediately collapse into somber inward turned pessimism. Luciel is fractured, Saeyoung is nervous, 707’s fading away little by little each time the moon shines overhead. He’s been spinning without a magnetic pole, a program whirling away without any parameters. He doesn’t know who he is, what he can even give to her. Whether what he is would even be enough.

She’s probably beginning to doubt this, them. He couldn’t blame her.

“Yeah,” his exhale is weighty, it folds up the vulnerable edges of himself along with it and leaves him listless. Hopeless.

Her fingertips touch his chin, lifting his gaze back to her wide eyes. “I’m not leaving, Saeyoung.” Her mouth is a grim, pressed line. Her eyes shine, dark and enveloping. “You’re stuck with me.” She’s smiling, just a little and he can see the faint moon light caress her dimples and _oh_. Oh he loves her so much, so much it makes his chest constrict and heat burn his eyes.  

He tells her as much, just to watch the faint blush hit her cheeks, the way her eyebrows curve upwards as if she can’t believe it. He kisses her, slowly then. Comforting himself in the way she sighs into it and her fingers trace the divot on the back of his head instinctively, pulling him in closer. She’s so soft, gentle and warm with a ferocity that always, always catches him off guard and it’s enough. It’s more than enough, it’s everything. It lights him from inside like stardust, shooting through his veins and skittering across his heart and it’s everything.

It has to be enough.

 

___

 

It’s hard to believe it’s been months, that time has flown and swooped and surrounded them both. It seems so little and so much all at once, a convoluted blend of too much and too little. It’s not tangible, not concrete enough for him to wrap his hands around and conceptualize and he can’t process any of it. Theories, abstractions, none of it can explain how easy all of it is. How simply they can fall asleep smiling with their feet tangled together and her fore head pressed against his chest. Nothing in Saeyoung’s life had ever been easy, had ever existed without a give and a take.

Everything had a price to pay, everything came with costs. She wanted nothing from him, nothing but his presence and his love and he would give it all gladly but there had to be something _more_.

 

__

 

He stumbled into a happy ending without deserving any of it, and he didn’t know where to tie up the loose ends, where to go from here. V was dead, Saeran didn’t hate him, he woke up every morning to the most beautiful brown eyes he’d ever seen; he didn’t deserve this.

Every moment he spent happy, was another toll on his heart. Every time he smiled, he felt a chill like the ghosts of his past were waiting on the skirts of his gaze, and the edge of his teeth. He was a dangerous man, even still. Too many wanted ads, too many enemies, too many eyes watching, waiting for a misstep. Mostly, too many lies.

But, she knew all of them. But, she loved him anyways. But, screamed the insidious doubt that threaded his fractured heart together, she might wake up one day and decide she doesn’t.

But, it whispered, she deserved better.

Sometimes he let himself believe for a heartbeat moment, that it was all real. That the sunlight toned morning breakfasts and his brother smiling at him from across the table, just subtly, wasn’t temporary. Sometimes he let himself be happy, for a second.

“I’ll never forgive you, V.” He remembers the way he’d thrown the older man against the walls of their prison, the absolute loathing coursing through every cell of his being. His vision was a pinprick within a red haze, focusing only on the pressed tight line of V’s lips, the carved out lines of his forehead, the guilt pouring from him in waves.  He remembers the way he’d cursed V’s name, promised him hatred and emptiness for the remainder of his life, the way he’d looked into V’s eyes -blindemptygreyedout- and hated him.

He remembers waking up, after it was all said and done. The way her brown hair had fallen in front of her eyes and she’d looked so, so tired as she told him. _He’s gone._

 

_____

 

Saeyoung had known, his entire life that he was worth nothing. His mother had drilled it into their heads, bruised it into their skin. The agency had written it into his contract somewhere beyond the dotted lines. V had poured it like acid into his upturned palms like an offering from God himself.

For a moment, when he’d kicked her door open and careened into her life with wires and electronics and secrets trailing behind, he’d forgotten. Because she’d looked at him, held practically at gunpoint, and she’d _smiled_. She’d faced death, looked it straight in the eyes, and she’d yelled for Luciel.

Yelled that she loved him.

And that had made him worth something, for a moment.

But then, Saeran. God, Saeran. His twin brother, his only brother, who thought he’d abandoned him to die. His brother who didn’t understand that everything Saeyoung had done, everything he’d been trying to do was in the hopes that it would give Saeran a chance to see the blue skies once again. His brother who couldn’t possibly know that nothing Saeyoung had ever been was worth anything, that Saeyoung’s life had been moot until he’d had a chance to offer his brother freedom. Except, as it turned out, it had been a lie anyways. His hard work, his focus, his years of working as a hacking slave. Useless.

He’d created programs and back doors and tightened security so many times, to keep his brother out. The irony of it all could have crushed him. Should have crushed him.

His life had been important when it had meant a chance for Saeran to be happy. Without that, he was nothing once again.

 

___

 

He’d said it, once, on accident. They’d been discussing work, his future plans and hers and how to make their schedules coincide so someone was home. The ‘with Saeran’ went unspoken. Saeyoung couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep or eat or think when his brother was alone. The glint-flash of shattered glass kept catching his breath in his chest and he’d be rushing home without realizing anyways.

She’d asked him what he wanted to do, what his passions were, what he’d always dreamt of doing and he hadn’t been thinking, not really but it had trailed out anyways. Her stunned expression was enough to slap him back into reality with ice cold ferocity, her sudden push away from the table was less unexpected. He’d been sure he’d chased her off then.

Panic curling fast and hot underneath his palms left him dizzy and frozen. Hours later, his mind returned bit by bit, and he’d found her curled up in bed, still dressed in her day clothes, tear stains trailing her cheeks and something in him had given way.

“You’re everything,” he whispered then. “I shouldn’t have… I couldn’t-“

She’d pulled him close, her wet cheeks leaving puddles on his shoulder and he’d held her back just as tightly. “You’re everything to me too, Saeyoung. Everything, and always.”

He stayed awake all night after that, mindlessly trailing his fingers through her hair and wondered when always ended.

 

__

 

Months ago, he’d been different. Hollowing out his insides made it easier to breath around the noose the agency dropped around his neck, smiling made it easier to escape just for the evening, from the darkness he lived in. Months ago, he’d known his place and known his lot in life and it had been fine because somewhere out there Saeran was grinning at blue skies and clouds and if he was confined to electric blue hues and darkness, so be it.

She’d filled him up, without him noticing. Plucking his disguises apart, piece by methodical piece and he’d only noticed when his heart had started beating again. By then, it had been too late, anyways.

It had hit him in the summer time, and again in the fall; it swirls across his vision in the winter like steam rising from a warm mug. He isn’t seasonal, he doesn’t falter when the sun heats his bones or the leaves match his hair because he knows himself. Knows the reasons why nobody else ever can get close enough to know him at all. Luciel knows the way his fingers shake late at night, as if the moon were pulling thoughts unbidden from his heart. He knows the way his voice shakes when he calls her, and he hates how she breaks him like this. Hates how she can pull away all the seams and stitches he worked so hard to maintain without ever trying, and he hates that he’s going to hurt her.

He knows its inevitable. The snow begins to melt and he hates himself more intensely than he’s ever hated anything.

Dangerous, he’d warned. Don’t get close. And he’d tried, god help him he’d flayed open his very center and flung words like daggers at her as best as he could to prove his point. He doesn’t falter when the nighttime hits, not like before because he knows himself. He knows how much trouble he drags along with every step.

 

__

 

She is something else entirely; sent from God himself, or else incarnated from Satan to test him in every way possible but he is weak above all else.

He falters.

Just for a moment, and suddenly she’s wrapping shaking, trembling arms around his center and begging him to take a breath. And he does, and the world changes.

For a hairsbreadth of a moment, he lets himself imagine it; a world with morning coffees and cuddles and someone to welcome home every day. His heart skips-shakes and his breaths stutter along with it. She holds tighter, cements him in place with her brutal honesty, her gentle patience and god, there are tears in her voice and tears stinging his eyes and maybe Luciel is seasonal. Maybe he can take a step outside and stare at blue skies and maybe he can grow.

She tells him he’s afraid of consequences that haven’t happened yet, that he’s closing doors before they’ve even opened. Luciel is weak, above all else. He sees her open hand, sees the path she’s wandering down without watching her steps and he sees all the warning signs in glaring clarity.

He takes her hand; he closes his eyes.

 

__

 

“You look worried,” Saeran’s typical low voice surprises him, he blinks back to himself and the loads of laundry he’s frozen in front of. He has one hand outstretched and the dryer is chirping at him and he wonders how much time he’s lost.

“If you’re that concerned about laundry, maybe you should let me do it,” Saeran continues. His tone is half amused, almost. An undercurrent of something lighter beneath the barbed bitterness. Mostly the same careful grumpy reluctance he always carries. Saeyoung forces his arm down, a nervous bubble of laughter escaping through him. “I've got it!” He yelps more than speaks, and winces at his own discomfort. 

Saeran simply raises an eyebrow at him, and shuffles towards the sink.

“Since when do you know so much about laundry anyways?” He aims for casual playfulness, his tone warps into something thinner, more obvious. Saeran shrugs, lifting the basket of clothes he carried with him onto the counter.

“It’s calming, for some reason,” he says softly. “I like working out the stains, bit by bit. And the rumbling is. Nice.”

There's a sadness in his tone he hadn't expected, like his words could turn somewhere darker, somewhere unspoken. He feels a joke prickle on his teeth, feels the age old compulsion to make things lighter, to avoid the sway of this conversation all together. But, it’s Saeran. Luciel doesn’t exist here, 707 means less than nothing. It’s only Saeran and Saeyoung, and Saeyoung would listen. Saeyoung would try. 

“Can you show me?” He nearly whispers and Saeran looks surprised, for a moment. His wide eyes catching Saeyoung’s gaze before skittering away down to his hands. He shrugs again, it’s lopsided and uncomfortable. 

“Yeah.”

He inhales a little too sharply, a little too excitedly at the easy acceptance.

"Can. Can you show me how to.." He wants to know how to make the almost's into something concrete. He wants to be able to make his brother laugh and wants all the nervousness to vanish. "The stains?"

Saeran freezes with a baggy sweater half folded in his hands, he pointedly doesn't look up and Saeyoung's chest catches with worry. He'd overstepped, again. This fragile space between them was mending but he kept pushing too hard, kept wanting too much and he should know better by now, he should-

"Sure."

There's a smile caught in his words, and Saeyoung's chest takes a funny leap because-oh. There it is. He hadn't realized how long his life had been careening out of orbit but suddenly, it's clicked back into place. Saeran sounds almost happy, almost alright, almost okay with Saeyoung being here, almost glad he asked.  There's a warmth building inside of his chest he doesn't know what to do with so he buries between the stacks of sweaters and the smell of fabric softener in the air. 

Saeyoung knows it’s all a process. Two steps forwards and one back, like a waltz. They’re both afraid of this, of being happy and neither of them knows where to place their feet next. But it’s warm and quiet and Saeran’s face is missing the typical hard lines of reservation, and they’re both trying. Maybe they’ll make it through alright, maybe when they wake up this time, everything will be where they left it.

 

__

 

He falls in love with her without meaning to. It’s something silly, that makes him realize. A moment where she’s laughing on the phone with Yoosung and he’s watching her toes curl between the couch cushions and her nose scrunch up in giddiness and his chest just, sinks.

He’s not greedy for people. He wants nothing to do with people, mostly. He had friends in college that he never spoke to again, friends in the agency that would probably kill him in a heartbeat if they were ordered to. He has the RFA, even though he shouldn’t, even though they don’t really know him. He has V and his kind reassurances and his low, soothing voice. He needs nothing else because he can’t have anything else.

No point in focusing on the impossible, after all.

No point in loving someone who can’t ever love you back.

It was almost a relief when she began cautiously sending kind words Jumin’s way. He caught her blushing during one of their conversations, her eyes shining that side of too happy he’d seen on new couples faces and he’d sunk inwards on himself and accepted it. She wasn’t his to miss, wasn’t his to be sad over and it was better this way anyways. Safer.

If he felt the sob caught in his throat, the loneliness that pierced through his chest like an arrow, he ignored it. If he felt the heartbreak it would make it real, it would make his weaknesses tangible and exploitable.

He would have been content to spend the rest of his evening drowning in various assignments and bottles of fizzing pop cans, denying and denying and avoiding until he succumbed to unconsciousness, but his phone rang. The buzz of it cutting him directly to the quick and he didn’t have to look at the contact name to see who it was because she was pacing in the hallway on his monitor screen, biting her lip and waiting.

“Hello?” His voice was too somber, too hopeful. He watched her smile light up the camera feed, and her kind words light up his chest, and he wonders if love was meant to be so dangerous. If love should ever be this fractured and impossible, but heaven help him, he can’t stop loving her if he tried.

Relief was dual sided, happiness coated in desperation. It was a death sentence for the both of them.

He falls in love without meaning to, a collection of thoughts and texts and watching her burrowing in a blanket late at night and send kindness in every direction she looked. He thinks it might be impossible not to love her, he sees it in the way Yoosung starts trying again, in the way Zen cares beyond all of the fake words. He sees it in the way Jaehee brushes her hair out of her eyes and looks down at her notes in the pictures she sends, always just a hint of a smile. He can tell, even in Jumin’s softer words that they lack their usual ice, as if he’s curious. And Luciel should push her somewhere else, any one in the RFA would understand just how precious she is. Any one of them would make her happy but there’s an unfamiliar burn in his chest at the thought and he dreams of holding her in his arms.

He's not greedy for people, he’s just greedy for her. It terrifies him.

 

__

 

"Saeyoung," she calls. And she always calls. "Come back to bed."

He thinks she might know him too well.

 

__

 

He realizes it, in the syrupy sweet sort of way they write about in books and fantasies. He never thought he’d be here. He never thought he’d live long enough to even care about tomorrow, but it was 12:34AM and he was excitedly typing on the RFA server. It was 12:34AM and he was grinning ear to ear; his socked toes pressed under her cold toes, a box hiding inside his jacket pocket, and Saeran lounging on the couch on his other side almost comfortably.

It was 12:34AM and the moonlight sweeping silver across the hallway didn’t pull at his chest.

‘When are you going to tell her?’ Yoosung typed.

‘At the party, tomorrow’ he replied, his thumbs nearly tripping over each other. ‘I want to ask her tomorrow’

‘Oh, that’s going to be quite romantic.’ Jaehee sent, followed by a pleased emoji. He grinned farther if it were possible. ‘I’m positive she will say yes.’

That was the important part, whether she’d agree, whether she’d be happy.

‘Yeah?’ he swallowed, excitement tampered slightly by nerves. She laughed beside him on the couch at the movie they were supposed to be watching, Saeran huffed a laugh.

‘Of course she will!’ Yoosung’s indignation was nearly palpable even through text. ‘You practically sing her love songs every time you’re both in the chat. How could she not say yes. Right Jaehee?’

‘Well’ and Saeyoung could physically feel her eyeroll ‘there’s a little bit more to marriage than lovesongs.’

‘I know that!’

‘However. I think it’s highly likely she will say yes. And I know you both will make each other very happy.’

Saeyoung paused. Emotion thick in his throat.

He chanced a glance her direction. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, her pj’s dotted with tiny rocket ships and she wiggled her toes against him. As if feeling his gaze on her, she shot him a playful wink.

Saeyoung blinked at the messenger, seeing Saeran’s username pop up.

‘She’s going to say yes.’

‘And you two are going to be disgustingly domestic.’

‘And. Happy. She’ll say yes. Ask her tomorrow.’

He cautiously turned his gaze to his brother, who was resolutely not blinking from the movie. Saeyoung saw his phone open in his right hand, and the faint smirk on his lips, though. He settled back farther into the couch, bumping his shoulder lightly with his brothers.

‘All three of us will be happy.’ He replied. He looked away as Saeran’s phone blinked, watching her giggle at something on the screen and cover her mouth with too long sleeve covered hands. He’d never felt so light, so cotton candy coated and grin filled. He wanted to tackle her into a hug, wanted to pull his brother closer and laugh at nothing and everything all at once. He wanted to cry, to yell, to curl up somewhere smaller and darker and breathe for a moment.

Saeran’s shoulder bumped his, gently.

‘Yeah,’ Saeran wrote. ‘We will be.’  

 

 

 

 


End file.
